Ever been caught in a standoff with a ticket collector on your local U-Bahn line who insists on taking down your details despite your protestations that you left your card at home? Why not send a chill down his spine by coolly quoting Clint Eastwood's classic Dirty Harry quote?

Or what if you’ve just started dating a German girl, but you can’t quite find the perfect way of expressing your feelings for her? Take a tip out of Gollum’s book and rasp out the German for “my precious” - "mein Schatz!"

Didn’t quite hear if the lady behind the desk in the Berlin Bürgeramt was picking you out of the hundreds of people waiting to register? Learn from Robert de Niro’s iconic character in Taxi Driver, Travis Bickle.

But don’t say “you talkin’ to me?” Do say “Redest du mit mir?” And only very slightly passive aggressively.